3 tips for those who want to become skilled at search engine optimization. It’s easy to believe you’ve mastered SEO once you’ve learned the basics. With 2021 approaching, I’d like to highlight three points I’ve come across repeatedly during the past year. Here are my three best tips for becoming a truly skilled SEO in 2021.
There is depth in SEO
Many people have learned how to change title tags and check loading times. If you want to become truly skilled in the field, you need to look beyond the detail work. Of course, that also needs to be in place, but being able to identify keywords and optimize a landing page so it can rank is just the first step.
It doesn’t end with sitemaps, anchor text distribution, or crawl budget either. There’s more to understand. Maybe you’ve mastered siloing or you can predict what pagerank (yes, Google still uses that value) a page on the site will receive, but there’s still more.
If you want to become skilled, don’t settle for just being good at the basics.
Don’t trust Google Search Console
Search Console is a tool with broken, inaccurate, and misrepresented data. It is not part of Google’s algorithm. The numbers shown for average position, clicks, and so on can be a decent indicator, but they are not real data—they are, at best, estimates.
Over the last five to six years, Search Console has improved a lot, but for those of us who had the chance to compare it with Analytics when search data was still available there, we know something is off in Search Console. The biggest keywords are completely missing, the figures display outright incorrect information, and so on. Anyone who measures positions with reasonable precision knows these don’t match at all.
Filters are bigger and more than you think
Many think of Panda and Penguin when they think of filters—if they think of filters at all. Google filters search results extensively, and while Panda and Penguin are well-known, they are by no means the majority. In fact, my view is that they’re barely filters anymore.
The number of times we’ve had to save a site that another SEO has pushed into a filter is large. Depending on what was triggered, it can be a long and tough road back, where sites are penalized for actions taken years ago, or where you must tread so carefully that it’s impossible to make money.
Cowboy behavior—shooting from the hip—causes long-term problems. Maybe it can be a valuable lesson, but it’s a shame if you crash your clients’ companies just to learn it.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.